Masters Of War

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks. You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain. You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion' As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins. How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul. And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand over your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead.------- Bob Dylan 1963

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Try to remain calm -- even as you begin to feel your chest tighten and your heart race. Try not to panic as water starts flowing into your nose and mouth, while you attempt to constrict your throat and slow your breathing and keep some air in your lungs and fight that growing feeling of suffocation. Try not to think about dying, because there’s nothing you can do about it, because you’re tied down, because someone is pouring that water over your face, forcing it into you, drowning you slowly and deliberately. You’re helpless. You’re in agony.

In short, you’re a victim of “water torture.” Or the “water cure.” Or the “water rag.” Or the “water treatment.” Or “tormenta de toca.” Or any of the othernicknames given to the particular form of brutality that today goes by the relatively innocuous term “waterboarding.”

The practice only became widely known in the United States after it was disclosed that the CIA had been subjecting suspected terrorists to it in the wake of 9/11. More recently, cinematic depictions of waterboarding in the award-winning filmZero Dark Thirty and questions about it at the Senate confirmation hearing for incoming CIA chief John Brennan have sparked debate. Water torture, however, has a surprisingly long history, dating back to at least the fourteenth century. It has been a U.S. military staple since the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was employed by Americans fighting an independence movement in the Philippines. American troops would continue to use the brutal tactic in the decades to come -- and during the country’s repeated wars in Asia, they would be victims of it, too.

Water Torture in Vietnam

For more than a decade, I’ve investigated atrocities committed during the Vietnam War. In that time, I’ve come to know people who employed water torture and people who were brutalized by it. Americans and their South Vietnamese allies regularly used it on enemy prisoners and civilian detainees in an effort to gain intelligence or simply punish them. A picture of the practice even landed on thefront page of the Washington Post on January 21, 1968, but mostly it went on in secret. READ MORE

The Scottish lesson, rarely mentioned in history books, shows what else can be behind economic miracles other than the factors - migration of hard-working, skilled people, stable money and significantly lower taxes - indicated in the second part of this series.

Scotland in 1750 was a very poor country. The land was of poor quality, and illiterate people engaged in near-subsistence agriculture; there were no navigable rivers; barren mountains and rocky hills hindered communication. The main export at the time was processed tobacco. Yet, less than a century later, Scotland

stood with England at the forefront of the world's industrial nations. Its standard of living was the same as England's, whereas in 1750 it was about half. How did the Scots do it?

The Union of 1707 made Scotland part of England. It came under England's system of taxes, laws and currency and was allowed access to English markets - a mini version of the later European common market READ MORE

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

'I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.'- George Bush Jnr, 2002

Radio 4 is currently broadcasting a series of programmes to mark the anniversary of George Orwell's birth in 1903. They provide a great opportunity to catch up with adaptations of the work of one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century British left.

They also give a chance to revisit the ongoing debate concerning the legacy of a writer whose relationship with the left was always ambiguous. For some, his two best known works, Animal Farm and 1984, represent devastating assaults on the politics of Leninism. Neoconservative commentator Norman Podhoretz wrote in 2004:

‘I believe he would have been a neoconservative if he were alive today. I would even suggest that he was a forerunner of neo-conservatism...’

Others on the left have looked to Homage to Catalonia as one of the most inspiring accounts ever written of the possibility of workers' power, a perception that led HG Wells to refer to Orwell as a ‘Trotskyist with big feet’.

The elusive nature of Orwell’s politics is no doubt part of his appeal to a broad strand of readers over the decades since his death in 1950. The attempted appropriation of his legacy by the right, however, needs to be resisted regularly so the left can clearly claim him as one of their own, who is still relevant to the challenges of the movement in the 21st century.

Shadow of empire

Orwell (originally named Eric Blair) was born in India into what he famously described ‘as the lower-upper-middle class’.

This dislocated sense of identity would become a feature of his personality and partly explains his later reluctance to align himself unreservedly with a political organisation. His father was a middle-ranking colonial administrator in the civil service of the British Raj. The shadow of the British Empire fell over his life from the start and would remain a source of his hatred of oppression to the end. He was sent to boarding school inEngland, aged 8, andthere encountered another manifestation of egregious authority in the form of sadistic teachers. He later described enduring corporal punishment at the hands of the headmaster:

‘he read me a short but pompous lecture, then seized me by the scruff of the neck, twisted me over and began beating me with the riding-crop.’

He followed the conventional educational path of the English elite to Eton, but afterwards chose to serve as a colonial policeman in Burma, rather than progress to university. It was in this role that his inchoate dislike of authority burgeoned into antipathy of the imperial structure. He encountered the brazen racism and discrimination inflicted on the population by the British overlords. He movingly recounted the psychological impact of participating in the execution of a Burmese prisoner:

‘It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.’

The road to socialism

The Burma experience fuelled his anti-imperialism but he struggled to identify a clear channel for his politics after his return from that country in 1927. His empathy for the oppressed had firmly taken root, however, and expressed itself in his journalistic accounts of their situation as the Great Depression hit in the 1930s. Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and Road to Wigan Pier (1937) are both searing accounts of the exploitation endured by both the underclass and working class. Orwell believed it was necessary to undergo first-hand the experiences of the downtrodden in order to fully appreciate the nature of their plight. 'I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed; to be one of them and on their side against the tyrants', he wrote.

This conviction led him to spend time among the homeless in Paris, miners in Lancashire and other groups at the cutting edge of capitalist exploitation. The experiences contributed to the growing attraction of socialist ideas for Orwell. Reflecting on these experiences, he later wrote:

'the most important part of Marx’s theory is contained in the saying: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."...And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion - which, of course, is why theyhate him so much.'

A number of pieces have been written recently on “unity” amongst the left and the ways we can achieve that. What follows are the reasons I reject left unity as a notion and the kind of real unity that the workers' movement needs – and, to a large extent, already has.

I've written about this previously in relation to specific issues, both here andhere. However, the issue rears its head again and again, and as certain struggles gain momentum the question will continue to crop up ever more frequently. So here I'll go over the two broad schools of left unity and why they only serve to undermine the class struggle READ MORE

Police officers at a checkpoint during the manhunt Christopher Dorner, an ex-Los Angeles cop accused of three killings, on State Route 38 in Angelus Oaks, Calif., Feb. 12, 2013. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / The New York Times).......................................A militarist state must raise boys ready and able to commit violence enthusiastically, providing it is directed against peoples whom their rulers deem enemies. As the typical American boy grows up, the media inundates him with violence. For generations, boys have been watching John Wayne Westerns, showing how lawmen must conquer outlaws and the land must be purged of savages. Bomber pilots, like John McCain, are upheld as paragons of heroic moral virtue. The same day as a former Navy lieutenant and police officer was on his rampage in Los Angels, CNN broadcast a long segment praising Clinton Romesha, a newly minted winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor as the "bravest of the brave," who directed the killing of over thirty Afghani "enemies" in a 12-hour battle which left eight Americans dead.

Military societies cannot reproduce themselves without sustaining the commitment to guns and the morality of gun violence in the larger society. In his Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the penetration of the values and economic interests of the military-industrial complex into the heart of civil society. The Newtown massacre and the ex-LA police officer's rampage are powerful reminders of Eisenhower's understanding of how the military inevitably shapes the morality and conduct of civilians and companies, always threatening to bring wars home. As Martin Luther King lamented at the height of the war in Vietnam, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

King went on to say: "The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit." READ MORE

Visitors to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum (ALPM) in Springfield, Illinois risk drowning in American mythology. The building consists mostly of rooms arranged chronologically. Each room represents a major stage in Lincoln’s life, starting with the Kentucky log cabin where he was born. The last exhibit is the Representatives’ Hall in Springfield's Old State Capitol where the 16th President's closed casket sits covered in flowers. Here visitors can, in effect, pay their last respects to the man John Wilkes Booth assassinated.

After passing Lincoln’s coffin, the last stage of the tour, people leave the room and re-enter the museum’s spacious central receiving area. As they emerge into the light, they will see the log cabin where the tour started. The incredible social distance the museum’s namesake travelled in only fifty-six years is breathtaking. The unmistakable message behind the museum and the other Lincoln sites in and around Springfield is that despite his meagre beginning, the 16th President’s vast accomplishments prove that America holds a bright future for everyone who works hard and persists. If you fall short, you've only yourself to blame. The ALPM is a government owned monument to the land of equal opportunity.

But is this really true? In recent years, various researchers have described how the distribution of wealth affects the social mobility odds of lower class Americans.[1] In the US, the top fifth of the population holds 84% of the country's wealth, while the second quintile owns 11%, the third 4%, the fourth 0.2%, and the bottom quintile 0.1%.[2] The top 1% of American households possesses 36% of all private wealth, more than the bottom 90% combined.[3] The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has reported that the lowest 20% of American households earned an average annual income of $20,510, while the top 20% received $164,490 – a 8-1 ratio. These highest versus lowest quintile comparisons exceeded 8-1 in 15 of the nation’s 50 states. In the late 1970s, not one state had a ratio greater than 8-1.[4]

Of the twelve most economically advanced countries, the US ranks tenth in intergenerational mobility, only slightly above Britain and Italy.[5] Tom Hertz notes that during their lifetimes, American children born of low-earning families had a 1% chance of eventually having incomes in the highest 5% category, while children born of wealthy parents were 22 times more likely to earn incomes in this range. Americans with middle class incomes were just slightly more upwardly mobile than their poorer counterparts were; only 1.8% of children born to families in the middle-income quintile eventually had earnings in the highest 5%.[6]READ MORE

Peruvian archaeologists discovered a temple in Lima that may predate Stonehenge and be the oldest known in the Americas.

The rectangular stone building in the El Paraiso archaeological complex in the north of the capital may date to 3000 B.C., Deputy Culture Minister Rafael Varon said in an e- mailed statement yesterday. The temple was found inside a complex of 10 buildings that were first explored in 1965.

A temple was discovered in the El Paraiso archaeological complex may date to 3000 B.C. Photograph: Peruvian Ministry of Culture

The building, which covers an area of 48 square meters (517 square feet) and was plastered with a mud layer and decorated with red paint, may be as old as Caral, a 5,000-year-old temple north of Lima discovered in 2001, said Jose Hudtwalcker, an archaeologist at the Riva y Aguero Institute in Lima. At 3,000 BC the temple would predate the Step Pyramid in Egypt and Stonehenge in England.

“This was the pre-Ceramic Period, when civilizations lived off fishing and basic agriculture,” Hudtwalcker, author of the forthcoming book on coastal Peruvian civilizations -- “San Lorenzo Island: Territory & Encounters” -- said today by phone. “Carbon dating will make it definitive, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at least as old as Caral.”

Workers discovered a fireplace in the center of the construction, nicknamed the Temple of Fire, that may have been used for sacrificial offerings of shellfish and agricultural produce, said Marco Guillen, who headed the team of archaeologists who made the find.

Peruvian archaeologists discovered a temple in Lima that may predate Stonehenge and be the oldest known in the Americas.

The rectangular stone building in the El Paraiso archaeological complex in the north of the capital may date to 3000 B.C., Deputy Culture Minister Rafael Varon said in an e- mailed statement yesterday. The temple was found inside a complex of 10 buildings that were first explored in 1965.

A temple was discovered in the El Paraiso archaeological complex may date to 3000 B.C. Photograph: Peruvian Ministry of Culture

The building, which covers an area of 48 square meters (517 square feet) and was plastered with a mud layer and decorated with red paint, may be as old as Caral, a 5,000-year-old temple north of Lima discovered in 2001, said Jose Hudtwalcker, an archaeologist at the Riva y Aguero Institute in Lima. At 3,000 BC the temple would predate the Step Pyramid in Egypt and Stonehenge in England.

“This was the pre-Ceramic Period, when civilizations lived off fishing and basic agriculture,” Hudtwalcker, author of the forthcoming book on coastal Peruvian civilizations -- “San Lorenzo Island: Territory & Encounters” -- said today by phone. “Carbon dating will make it definitive, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at least as old as Caral.”

Workers discovered a fireplace in the center of the construction, nicknamed the Temple of Fire, that may have been used for sacrificial offerings of shellfish and agricultural produce, said Marco Guillen, who headed the team of archaeologists who made the find.

Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an "axis of evil".

No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list), is way slicker. As much as he self-confidently pitched a blueprint for a "smart" - not bigger - US government, he kept his foreign policy cards very close to his chest.

Few eyebrows were raised on the promise that "by the end of next year our war in Afghanistan will be over"; it won't be, of

course, because Washington will fight to the finish to keep sizeable counterinsurgency boots on the ground - ostensibly to fight, in Obama's words, those evil "remnants of al-Qaeda".

Obama promised to "help" Libya, Yemen and Somalia, not to mention Mali. He promised to "engage" Russia. He promised to seduce Asia with the Trans-Pacific Partnership - essentially a collection of corporate-friendly free-trade agreements. On the Middle East, he promised to "stand" with those who want freedom; that presumably does not include people from Bahrain.

As this was Capitol Hill, he could not help but include the token "preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons"; putting more "pressure" on Syria - whose "regime kills its own people"; and to remain "steadfast" with Israel.

North Korea was mentioned. Always knowing what to expect from the horse's mouth, the foreign ministry in Pyongyang even issued a preemptive attack, stressing that this week's nuclear test was just a "first response" to US threats; "second and third measures of greater intensity" would be unleashed if Washington continued to be hostile.

Obama didn't even bother to answer criticism of his shadow wars, the Drone Empire and the legal justification for unleashing target practice on US citizens; he mentioned, in passing, that all these operations would be conducted in a "transparent" way. Is that all there is? Oh no, there's way more.

Shortly after 4pm Pacific Standard Time, the cabin was engulfed in flames, with CNN helicopters broadcasting plumes of black smoke from a distance of five miles. A single gunshot is reported from within the house. A narrative quickly emerged among the mainstream media, which we should recall was conspicuously absent from the scene, that police agencies had only deployed tear gas, and that perhaps Dorner himself had set the fire. Soon, what seems to be a cache of ammunition is exploding sporadically.

But for those of us listening to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department radio frequency, there was little question what had occurred. Nearly a half hour prior, officers had referred to “going ahead with the plan with the burner,” with another adding that the plan was to “back the Bear down and deploy the burner through the turret.” (Live audio during the preceding shootout seems to confirm this intention). Soon, the message was straightforward and expected: “Seven burners have deployed and we have a fire.” No surprised tones, no suggestion that the fire be extinguished.

In fact, there was the exact opposite: a female voice on the scanner repeatedly asks if the fire crews should be allowed to approach, and is told that it’s not time yet, that we need to wait until all four corners are engulfed, then that we need to wait until the roof collapses. At one particularly repulsive point, those on the scene realize that the house has a basement, and an authoritative male voice indicates that the fire crew would not be called until the fire had “burned through the basement.” They were going to let him die.

References to the 1993 massacre at Waco, Texas, the murderous 1985 bombing of the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia were immediate, and will serve as opposing frames for Dorner’s death in the days and weeks to come.

A murder? An assassination? A lynching? An execution.

State of the Union: Flammable

This is a day of a million possible metaphors, but central among these should be the image of the burning house. In an effort to distinguish what he called the “house negro” from the “field negro,” Malcolm X had once observed that the two responded differently when the master’s house caught fire: “But that field negro, remember, they were in the majority, and they hated their master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try to put it out, that field negro prayed for a wind.” While the metaphor may seem a strange one, given the fiery death of a man some have compared to a runaway slave. But as many Americans choose to gaze, mesmerized, at the glowing embers of the Dorner saga rather than watching the State of the Union, it’s worth wondering: whose house is really on fire? And who is praying for wind? READ MORE

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

On July 19, 1969, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote the following about Israel's nuclear weapons program: "There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States by about 1965."

HOUSTON, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- British oil giant BP has signed a 20- year agreement to export U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas, a Freeport LNG official said Monday.

The BP contract is for 4.4 million tons of LNG per year at the Freeport LNG facility, where it would be loaded onto BP tankers and shipped abroad, the Houston Chronicle quoted Freeport LNG CEO Michael Smith as saying.

BP is the third company to sign an agreement to buy LNG from the facility, following two Japanese companies Osaka Gas and Chubu Electric Power, which contract another 4.4 million tons of LNG per year from the facility, said the report.

BP, Europe's second biggest energy company, is joining Shell, Exxon Mobil and Total SA in the race to ship burgeoning North American production overseas.

The booming natural gas production in the U.S. sent natural gas prices last year to their lowest level in a decade, prompting companies to seek permission to ship U.S. fuel overseas.

Freeport is one of more than 20 proposed LNG export terminals in the U.S. seeking permits allowing processing of about 31 billion cubic feet a day, according to media reports.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Presidential decisions often turn out to be far less significant than imagined, but every now and then what a president decides actually determines how the world turns. Such is the case with the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if built, is slated to bring some of the “dirtiest,” carbon-rich oil on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. In the near future, President Obama is expected to give its construction a definitive thumbs up or thumbs down, and the decision he makes could prove far more important than anyone imagines. It could determine the fate of the Canadian tar-sands industry and, with it, the future well-being of the planet. If that sounds overly dramatic, let me explain.

Sometimes, what starts out as a minor skirmish can wind up determining the outcome of a war -- and that seems to be the case when it comes to the mounting battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. If given the go-ahead by President Obama, it will daily carry more than 700,000 barrels of tar-sands oil to those Gulf Coast refineries, providing a desperately needed boost to the Canadian energy industry. If Obama says no, the Canadians (and their American backers) will encounter possibly insuperable difficulties in exporting their heavy crude oil, discouraging further investment and putting the industry’s future in doubt.

The battle over Keystone XL was initially joined in the summer of 2011, when environmental writer and climate activist Bill McKibben and 350.org, which he helped found, organized a series of non-violent anti-pipeline protests in front of theWhite House to highlight the links between tar sands production and the accelerating pace of climate change. At the same time, farmers and politicians in Nebraska, through which the pipeline is set to pass, expressed grave concern about its threat to that state’s crucial aquifers. After all, tar-sands crude is highly corrosive, and leaks are a notable risk.

In mid-January 2012, in response to those concerns, other worries about the pipeline, and perhaps a looming presidential campaign season, Obama postponed a decision on completing the controversial project. (He, not Congress, has the final say, since it will cross an international boundary.) Now, he must decide on a suggested new route that will, supposedly, take Keystone XL around those aquifers and so reduce the threat to Nebraska’s water supplies. READ MORE

Tikal Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilisations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable. Credit: cc by 3.0

- The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food.

Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.

This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts.

On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system.

Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early twenty-first-century civilisation, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilisations whose archeological sites we now study? READ MORE

Hillary Clinton has completed her four-year tenure as Secretary of State to the accolades of both Democratic and Republican Congressional champions of the budget-busting “military-industrial complex,” that President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address. Behind the public relations sheen, the photo-opportunities with groups of poor people in the developing world, an ever more militarized State Department operated under Clinton’s leadership.

A militarized State Department is more than a repudiation of the Department’s basic charter of 1789, for the then-named Department of Foreign Affairs, which envisioned diplomacy as its mission. Secretary Clinton reveled in tough, belligerent talk and action on her many trips to more than a hundred countries. She would warn or threaten “consequences” on a regular basis. She supported soldiers in Afghanistan, the use of secret Special Forces in other places and “force projection” in East Asia to contain China. She aggressively supported or attacked resistance movements in dictatorships, depending on whether a regime played to Washington’s tune.

Because Defense Secretary Robert Gates was openly cool to the drum beats for war on Libya, Clinton took over and choreographed the NATO ouster of the dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, long after he had given up his mass destruction weaponry and was working to re-kindle relations with the U.S. government and global energy corporations. Libya is now in a disastrous warlord state-of-chaos. Many fleeing fighters have moved into Mali, making that vast country into another battlefield drawing U.S. involvement. Blowback!

Time and again, Hillary Clinton’s belligerence exceeded that of Obama’s Secretaries of Defense. From her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee to her tenure at the State Department, Hillary Clinton sought to prove that she could be just as tough as the militaristic civilian men whose circle she entered. Throughout her four years it was Generalissima Clinton, expanding the American Empire at large.

Here is some of what the candid camera of history will show about her record: READ MORE

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. . . . It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”

“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it”...................READ MORE

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